tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-318462432012-02-16T19:43:41.552+09:00Reviewing Products and Spouting NonsenseJ.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-25299737084822993262008-09-29T21:50:00.001+09:002008-09-29T21:50:23.886+09:00

[LIFE IN JAPAN]A step-by-step guide to owning a home in JapanTOMOKO OTAKEhttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080928x3.html-------------------------The Japan Times Online: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/Online Advertising: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/jt-ad-server/ webads@japantimes.co.jp-------------------------------------------------- Copyright(C) 2006 The Japan Times Online----------

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-5633100300657560942006-11-15T11:36:00.000+09:002006-11-15T11:40:04.264+09:00

Hey! This site has moved!! It moved to a hosted domain powered by WordPress. It's not as pretty or cool looking, but that will change over time.www.goodbyehelicopter.comSee you there!

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-39052865732751202092006-10-27T08:49:00.000+09:002006-10-27T09:04:49.093+09:00

SoundBooth, a slight knockoff name of Apple's PhotoBooth? Regardless, it isn't what you think. Long ago, in the late 90's, there was a company called Macromedia and they had a splendid app called SoundEdit-16. It was easy to use, powerful, small, and could have had longer legs. It never did get the .mp3 file support it needed. Macromedia had a much loved app that many swore by, and they let it

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-49797032753090627022006-10-26T16:34:00.000+09:002006-10-26T16:45:19.614+09:00

Hmm... there seem to be some very cool things in here. Under the Tools menu there is a DOM inspector. It is actually very very very cool for web developers. Want to see the document tree? There it is in a pretty good DOM browser. As you highlight a visual element in the DOM browser, FireFox 2 will flash a red border around that element in the web browser window. Very cool and very useful. The

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-60008595613520226862006-10-26T12:25:00.000+09:002006-10-26T12:54:19.438+09:00

Wow, Lou Dobbs has balls, big ones. He held a live "town hall" meeting in San Antonio, Texas talking about the border problem, the problems of drugs and immigration from Mexico and more. What he may not have been aware of is that San Antonio is mostly sympathetic to Mexican migrants. Nobody there wants to use the words "illegal alien" because they say it sounds like space beings. Well, that's

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-44004618349037803382006-10-26T02:05:00.000+09:002006-10-26T02:14:33.934+09:00

Downloaded, installed and tried FireFox 2 on OS X today. Let me say, it is a little rough around the edges. Still can't render type at small sizes well. It seems to be picky as hell about rendering right floated elements in CSS. If there isn't a LOT OF ROOM, it will just push the right floated element off the screen. I mean it noticeably wastes available space. Oh well. It also still loads slow

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-88597052509904406482006-10-25T12:15:00.000+09:002006-10-25T12:30:09.108+09:00

Finally, some good junk! For those who still don't know, Battlestar Galactica (the new series) and Lost are both excellent. Definitely classics in the making. Both are in their 3rd seasons and things are really rolling. BG has only suffered 1 or 2 crap episodes of cliche character mushiness that were unrelated to the story arc. Lost has not done this. Both require seeing from the beginning to

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-68020222497058672492006-10-24T13:10:00.000+09:002006-10-24T13:37:27.080+09:00

Now you may be interested in web design. These days it means using CSS. Period. No more stinking tables, please. No more framesets. CSS makes things a lot easier to build and maintain because it removes much of the presentational aspects from the xhtml. (if you are not using xhtml strict, you should be) Now that IE 7 is out, you can forget about CSS hacks for IE support. If IE 7 still doesn't

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-26506050721418300412006-10-24T13:03:00.000+09:002006-10-24T13:09:22.495+09:00

creativebits.org is an excellent UK site with good tips and discussions on all things design. The tips are written from a Mac OS X perspective, but most of it should be useful even if you do use Photoshop, Illustrator, etc... on Windows. They also share the wonderful web hosting service DreamHost!

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-26876050090573800882006-10-21T19:29:00.000+09:002006-10-21T19:35:57.272+09:00

Oh no, another Wikipedia? Citizendium, it's called. Problems with wikianything and compidium-whatever:reality and fact are not determined by consensus. few of these things can ever be 100% non-biased.the biggest question is always "who decides?"so what makes you an expert?what makes you a better expert than another expert?what makes you a reasonable moderator?what topics should be included?why is

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-11089289799691567672006-10-19T13:46:00.000+09:002006-11-03T04:24:27.156+09:00

Dream Host is a truly excellent web hosting provider, a dream. They really do care about what they do and are not trying to milk customers for every little thing like all the others. Their prices are great. They offer unlimited numbers of domains / sites hosted at the same account. This is unbeatable. They do not charge extra for domain add-ons or for subdomains. As an actual ICANN domain name

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-42607096795249269732006-10-18T05:47:00.000+09:002006-11-03T04:22:04.234+09:00

Signed up for web hosting with DreamHost today. Spent the better part of last night and the morning mulling over the options for web hosting. It came down to 4 choices: Blue Host, Host Monster, Go Daddy, and DreamHost. They all offer lots of disk space and bandwidth as well as lots of one-click server software installs, free domain registration (1) and reasonable prices. Like were talking for the

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-83502313592907708402006-10-18T00:13:00.000+09:002006-10-18T00:15:49.305+09:00

John Simpson. One of the good guys. Sparse but intensely useful info on his site for server/webmaster admins and wannabes.

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-701862876453874112006-10-16T23:19:00.000+09:002006-10-16T23:36:57.239+09:00

It is not funny anymore.The Domain Name Nazis are really pissing me off.Sites like Sedo and BuyDomains.com (a.k.a. "Seeq") are really ruining the web for others. They masquerade as innnocent, honest businesses, but are no better than the profiteers who sell bottles of water at highway robbery prices during natural disasters. These people are just pirates. It is truly mind-numbing.I placed a

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-72120396639987562102006-10-16T19:34:00.000+09:002006-10-16T19:44:46.984+09:00

To this day, there are still amazing numbers of software developers that still do not suppot Mac OS X. It is truly unfathomable to me. Statistics are not necessary for this argument. It is well publicized in the media that the Mac market is growing fast these days. The big thing developers need to understand is that Mac users will spend money for quality. Period. This is obvious from the fact

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-13063126965981530072006-10-16T11:26:00.000+09:002006-10-16T11:36:32.096+09:00J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-76573084789652932142006-10-16T10:11:00.000+09:002006-10-16T10:21:37.582+09:00

moral lessons for adults...

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-4893039436916551632006-10-12T16:13:00.000+09:002006-10-12T16:14:06.386+09:00J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-13855277463727590432006-10-12T02:36:00.001+09:002006-10-12T02:36:52.397+09:00

Anybody else notice besides me? Adobe really is sucking more and more each year. Their products are less responsive, and not much more compelling. The only thing they've done right in 5 years is port their apps to OS X and finally roll Streamline into Illustrator. That's it. 99% of the functionality of Photoshop and Illustrator that people really use has been there and worked fine since the OS9

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-8613853418207270262006-10-11T03:32:00.001+09:002006-10-11T03:32:57.285+09:00

What is a "premium domain name" ?Hell, what's in a name?Given that all domain names exist as single entities, with no repetition, unlike human names... is it fair or just that domain squatting and domain brokering is allowed to continue? Google, W3C, government should all get together and begin shutting down the squatters and brokers. It is utterly unthinkable that people could just randomly

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-7443761146942839992006-10-11T00:21:00.001+09:002006-10-11T00:21:52.528+09:00

Well, while I'm on the Google kick, I think it is interesting to point out two services from Google that have not gotten  the huge press they could or should.Google Base and Google Checkout.Base serves as a repository, a pseudo-web site for you to list items for sale online, while Checkout serves as a Paypal like sales system, but probably better than Paypal and cheaper. Remember this, everything

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-19325901751079351552006-10-10T23:51:00.000+09:002006-10-10T23:52:00.949+09:00

Hmm... Google buys YouTube and makes deals with music industry and film/tv industry... now the Google Mac Blog?  Amidst background noises ongoing lately about Apple and Google working together quietly... something is afoot!!! Can't wait.I'm betting Jobs thunk up the idea that two companies with lots of great engineers and lots of trend-setting skill and industry clout are on to something and have

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-63131596735182329872006-10-03T10:11:00.001+09:002006-10-03T10:11:10.531+09:00

So, NetFlix is stumped on how to fix its "you'd like this movie" algorithm.Of course they are. This is some very tricky pattern matching. Number one, you have to analyze seemingly disparate clumps of data about your customers and your products. Stop looking at it from a recognizeable, human-readable set of patterns. Stop focusing on simple, obvious ideas like previous rentals, actors, genres

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-16394640286582835702006-10-02T23:57:00.001+09:002006-10-02T23:57:23.144+09:00

The W3C and all its proponents are constantly harping about accessibility. But accessibility of what? for who? The fundamental problem is that this established concept of "accessibility" assumes that the content is text. Most of the web is indeed text. But it has spectacularly grown WAAay beyond text only! Look at the wonders of video and audio content out there on the web. It is no less valid or

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31846243.post-39119349180204793872006-10-02T00:07:00.001+09:002006-10-02T00:07:26.280+09:00

Well, old Cringely has finally updated the NerdTV site. Though, the promised in early summer season 2 is not there. The truest sense of vaporware is there, promises and promises. Some odd things lead me to believe it is all vaporware. Number one they still talk about a Steve Wozniak interview coming. That's been talked up for over a year now! Number two, they talk about shooting the 1st season in

J.J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16416736170427189197noreply@blogger.com0